Hollywood's Top Doctors 2015: Best Hematologists in Los Angeles

The top M.D.s as nominated by their peers.

This story first appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Health and drama go together like air and water for Hollywood — the industry needs both to sustain itself. Just ask Seth MacFarlane, whose 2013 Oscar hosting gig was rescued by ear, nose and throat surgeon Dr. Shawn Nasseri, or So You Think You Can Dance producer Nigel Lythgoe, whose grandson was saved by pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Mark Krieger, or Charlie Sheen, whose shoulder injury was prevented from derailing a money-minting career by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Raj (yes, that’s his name — this is Hollywood, after all). For its second annual Doctors Issue, The Hollywood Reporter elicited stories of drama, trauma and triumph over both by surveying 2,000 professionals in the film, television, movie, music, sports and media fields to find out who are the most beloved, trusted and go-to physicians in L.A.

THR also scored an exclusive interview with former NBC medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who was excoriated for supposedly violating her Ebola quarantine, as well as her cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who did indeed contract the dreaded disease and lived to tell about it. THR also asked this haunting question: What happens to the patients when a beloved doctor dies? In the case of Dr. Fredric Brandt, the celebrity dermatologist who commanded eight figures in annual billing before committing suicide in April, the answer is: a gold rush among prominent doctors to grab what they can from the dermatological diaspora. THR found out how to live to be 100 and still work in Hollywood (centenarian Norman Lloyd recently appeared in Trainwreck) and, in perhaps the world’s first Hollywood-oriented DSM-V, catalogued the dominant dysfunctions and diagnoses of the industry’s top jobs, from studio exec to screenwriter (producers win the top prize for anxiety, by the way). Finally, if you’ve ever wondered if you’re as narcissistic as people say everyone in Hollywood is, there’s a quiz for that.

As for the official Hollywood’s Top Doctors list for 2015, to identify the 469 elite physicians who qualified for it, THR’s editors partnered with the physician-led research team of Castle Connolly, the U.S.' preeminent medical-database authority, to identify the highest-rated practitioners in their specialties, all of whom are nominated by their peers in an extensive survey process of thousands of U.S. doctors each year. The listed doctors rank in the nation’s top 10 percent and are among the very best in their specialties and communities. Castle Connolly screens these doctors’ medical educations, training, hospital appointments, disciplinary histories and much more. Doctors do not and cannot pay to be included.